Storyboard (27 page)

Such a curt “No!” Keith thought that Sylvia did not want to talk seriously, and searched around for
something
else to say. The accident had kept them much in each other’s company, but he was no longer used to it, and treated his wife like a casual acquaintance come to call, trying to fill the silences with conversation. “
Terrible
about those poor people on the gratings,” he said. Yes, it had been strange to see those poor people
sleeping
, in this December weather, on the gratings to which (Sylvia supposed) warm air came up from the Metro below. There were many such people in worse condition than she, and one did well to remind oneself of this.

Keith arranged his shirt on the clothes-hanger in the wardrobe, and put on the top of his pyjamas. A double bed. They were used to it at home, and in Paris it was to be expected. “Hope those dustmen don’t keep us awake tonight,” he said. “Silly idea emptying dustbins at four in the morning.” She wiped the cream from her face with a tissue.
What
me
spend
me
life
rearing
children.
To
feed
bloody
lions?
Not
me!
It was a cold-blooded thought, but such thoughts might come to anyone. She was only thirty-five, after all.

Usually, at home in Purley, she gone up to bed first because she was always so tired, and often she had been asleep by the time Keith had followed her. Simply in the nature of their closeness, and sleeping sometimes on his back, there had been times … but it had always been easy to discourage Keith, especially since he himself knew that his mouth was unpleasant in the mornings; Keith was always considerate. And on Sundays, Stephen would come in early.

Encouragement might not come as easily after the habit of discouragement. She played with the idea.
Cold-blooded
? But she
was
cold now. Keith said suddenly, “Do you want me to give up my job?” and Sylvia
almost
replied, “No. I just don’t want you to give in to
it,” but checked herself, and said instead, “Do
you
want to?” Not really cold-blooded; one had to be sensible.

“I don’t know.”

“What would you do instead?”

“Another agency?”

“I don’t see the point of that.”

“I could look for something on the client side.”

“Isn’t that the same thing, worse paid?”

“In a way.” Trousers hung on the back of a chair. He had already washed, and cleaned his teeth. “I don’t know what to do. We can’t go on as we are. I thought that perhaps if you wanted to go back to teaching…. I know we haven’t been talking about it, but I thought——”

“No, I don’t want to go back to teaching.” It wasn’t as if Keith were like the French husbands who, it was said, wore themselves out chasing other women. And she herself … Things were different; no, they couldn’t go on as they were. Keith would worry, and fret, and get up enough courage to “talk things out”, and then give up if he thought he were distressing her. Keith would think about things more, but she must take the decisions, and when she had done so, he would be
grateful
. He had a great capacity for love, she thought, as well as work, and there must be some way to make sure the second didn’t swallow up the first. She said, “You take things so seriously, darling. We have to go on.”

“Yes.”

“Together or apart, if you changed your job or if you didn’t, we’d have to go on somehow, wouldn’t we?”

“Yes.” Keith got into bed, and said with some
unsteadiness
, “Might as well be together then?”

The springs of the bed creaked. Human beings,
however
they might try to be dignified and romantic and all that, spent so much of their time behaving like the characters of a dirty joke. It couldn’t be helped, and it kept things going. Sylvia dabbed cologne on her neck and between the cleft of her breasts, and joined her husband in bed. One could do things in a cold way, but perhaps one got warm doing them.

*

In Kensington Gardens, men sat on straight chairs just outside the little shelter by the Round Pond. One wondered why they sat so straight with their hands in their laps, and then one noticed that each pair of hands grasped a reel of thin twine, and one could make out the diagonal line of twine dark against the sky, and follow it for a while until it disappeared into the colour, of the sky. From that point one projected, following the
direction
of the line, allowing for curve, and there, high up and motionless were the tiny kites, some shaped like boxes and some like birds. The men sat without moving or talking. They had brought sandwiches and their wives.

It would be dark soon, the early darkness of a
December
evening. In the east the sky was green, and in the west purple, and against it the trees, spreading their black leafless twigs, stood up like brooms. Such a cold day, but fine with it. Hugh had wondered whether to try the dogs with their coats, but it was no good; they wouldn’t enjoy the Gardens if they had to wear their coats, but would be forever sitting down, and
trying
to pull them off. They had walked in a great circular sweep almost to the Serpentine, and then up to
Queens-way
, and back again. They had harried a chihuahua and fled from an Alsatian, and it was time to go home.

They were yapping at a small boy, who had tried to pet Jane, but now ran for protection to his mother on a
park bench. The dogs followed. “Jane! Jilly! Sue!” Hugh cried. “Gome here! I’m terribly sorry. They won’t hurt him. They’d run away if he turned and winked at them.”

“Do your dogs like children?” the small boy said, and his mother added proudly, “He’s always been taught to ask that, because some dogs don’t, I know.”

“They’re a bit small for children really,” Hugh said to the small boy. “They’re always afraid they’ll get pulled about, so they bark a lot.” He picked Jill up, and presented her to the small boy, whereupon the other two bitches sat up and begged to be picked up as well. The small boy put his hand on Jill’s head, and looked
inquiringly
at Hugh. “Yes, you can stroke her if you like. She enjoys it.” Transports of jealousy from Jane and Sue, jumping up at Hugh’s legs. The small boy stroked, and went on stroking. Jill licked his nose. “That’s enough, dear,” said his mother. “You can’t keep the gentleman here all day.” Hugh put Jill down again, and at once the three began a game, showing themselves off, bouncing and whirling, coming in to attack like destroyers,
snarling
in mimic rage, then off again, taking time to laugh and to look round for admiration, before returning to the chase in a flurry of ears and tails.

“I wish I had a dog like that,” the small boy said.

John Bowen was born in India, sent ‘home’ to England at the age of four and a half, and was reared by aunts. He served in the Indian Army from 1943–47, then went to Oxford to read Modern History. After graduating he spent a year in the USA as a Fulbright Scholar, much of it hitch-hiking. He worked for a while in glossy journalism, then in advertising, before turning freelance when the BBC commissioned a six-part adventure-serial for children’s television. Between 1956 and 1965 he published six novels to excellent reviews and modest sales, then forsook the novel for nineteen years to concentrate on writing television drama (
Heil Caesar, Robin Redbreast
) and plays for the stage (
After the Rain, Little Boxes, The Disorderly Women
). He returned to writing novels in 1984 with
The McGuffin
; there were four more thereafter. Reviewers have likened his prose to that of Proust and P. G. Wodehouse, of E. M. Forster and the young John Buchan: it may be fair to say that he resists compartmentalisation. He has worked as a television producer for both the BBC and ITV, directed plays at Hampstead and Pitlochry and taught at the London Academy of Dramatic Art. He lives in a house on a hill among fields between Banbury and Stratford-on-Avon.